“Cometh the hour, cometh the man” is a cliché of dis­put­ed ori­gins. It is also an apt descrip­tion of Arch­bish­op Desmond Tutu. He would no doubt have referred any who applied it to him to the Gospel of John (4:23): “But the hour is com­ing, and is now here…” — which begs the ques­tion: Where are his successors?

The answer is, there are none, which is all the more lam­en­ta­ble because the hour when the world needs a man (excuse me, per­son) of the hour is upon us. Instead, we have polit­i­cal “lead­ers” who fol­low the dic­tates of opin­ion polls rather than prin­ci­ples, put re-elec­tion prospects above the com­mon good they are sup­posed to serve. They bow to those who shout loud­est about what­ev­er aggrieves them, counter-points be damned. Too many lie as eas­i­ly as they breath and some almost as often.
Tutu, on the oth­er hand, stuck to his prin­ci­ples no mat­ter what any­one else thought of them, or said about him. A White South African police­man once snarled at me: “Daardie Biskop is n fokkin kom­mu­nis”. (“That Bish­op is a f******* com­mu­nist”). I (point­less­ly) point­ed out that being a com­mu­nist and a man of the cloth were incom­pat­i­ble, which made the cop even angri­er. Tutu would have laughed, and quite pos­si­bly made the cop do the same.
When the Dean of St George’s Cathe­dral in Cape Town was arrest­ed for host­ing a demon­stra­tion against the first State of Emer­gency, for­mer CBS cam­era­man Jonathan Par­tridge was in the media scrum at Cale­don Square police sta­tion when Tutu arrived to bail the Dean out. “He was led down a cor­ri­dor of cells, and after 6 or 7, turned exas­per­at­ed­ly to the police offi­cer and said very loud­ly: ‘Where IS that naughty Dean?’” 

                               THE POWER OF BEING IRREPRESSIBLb

Giles Fras­er, Rec­tor at the south Lon­don church of St Mary’s, New­ing­ton, described the man affec­tion­ate­ly known as ‘The Arch’ as com­bin­ing an “imp­ish sense of fun and Old Tes­ta­ment prophet morality.”
He used them as both a weapon and a balm, often at the same time. In the mid-1980s, when South Africa’s black town­ships were caul­drons of vio­lence, anger and blood­shed, the white secu­ri­ty forces stalked Tutu wher­ev­er he went. Police sur­round­ed St Mary’s Cathe­dral in Johan­nes­burg sim­ply because he was pre­sid­ing over a ser­vice. For­mer CBS News cam­era­man Wim de Vos remem­bers that the mixed but main­ly black con­gre­ga­tion was under­stand­ably ner­vous, until the Arch­bish­op flashed his trade­mark smile and said: “Moe­nie wor­ry nie” (a com­mon hybrid Afrikaans-Eng­lish way of say­ing don’t sweat it) “God is with us”. The atmos­phere of deep unease seemed to dis­si­pate as mist does from the African veldt when the morn­ing sun touch­es it.
Armed only with the spir­i­tu­al pow­er of his office and his deep con­vic­tions of what was right and just, the diminu­tive Tutu did not hes­i­tate to phys­i­cal­ly impose him­self between riot police and angry black youths to pre­vent vio­lence and blood­shed. His res­cue of a man about to be burned alive by a mob in Duduza town­ship is legendary.
Today’s polit­i­cal lead­ers, armed with sci­ence and incon­tro­vert­ible evi­dence, flip-flop on impos­ing and in some cas­es even on advo­cat­ing nec­es­sary guide­lines, nev­er mind restric­tions to fight Covid, lest their unpop­u­lar­i­ty costs votes in the future.
Arch­bish­op Tutu feared nei­ther his ene­mies nor his allies. He called out vio­lence by both the enforcers of apartheid and black youths who saw it as the only way to over­throw the hate­ful sys­tem, As a black South African, he under­stood their anger, but as a cler­ic, knew there was anoth­er way.
For­mer CBS 60 Min­utes cam­era­man Chris Ever­son once told Tutu he thought it was trag­ic that South Africa wast­ed the oppor­tu­ni­ty of Mandela’s lead­er­ship for the 27 years he was in jail. “The Arch dis­agreed with me quite strong­ly. He said that before he was jailed, Man­dela had been some­thing of a hot­head­ed rad­i­cal, and those 27 ‘wast­ed years’ had made him the man he was.”

        A PRINCIPLED VERSION OF ‘ZERO TOLERANCE’

Tutu gave Mandela’s suc­ces­sors no quar­ter when they fell short of ful­fill­ing the vision and hopes the two men held for South Africa. But then, no human rights vio­la­tion was too dis­tant for him to oppose. He refused to take part in a sum­mit in Johan­nes­burg because for­mer British Prime Min­is­ter Tony Blair was a fea­tured speak­er. Of Blair and for­mer U.S. Pres­i­dent George W. Bush’s inva­sion of Iraq, Tutu said:“Those respon­si­ble for this suf­fer­ing and loss of life should be tread­ing the same path as some of their African and Asian peers who have been made to answer for their actions in the Hague.” (To which, hav­ing cov­ered Gulf War II and its after­math, I feel com­pelled to add: Hear! Hear!)
Fear­less, unflap­pable, wise, fair-mind­ed — “The Arch” was all and more. The world is the rich­er for hav­ing had him, the poor­er for his pass­ing. On avail­able evi­dence, it will be some time before we see a wor­thy suc­ces­sor to his legacy.
                         Ham­ba Kahle (Farewell) Arch­bish­op Desmond Tutu.

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